On their first studio album in three years, the Barenaked Ladies forgo most of their pop snap in favor of a very acoustic disc titled “Everything to Everyone.”

The lyrics are as clever as the best of their past tunes, but the mostly middle tempos make this a hard first listen.

After a few spins, the Tango-influenced “Upside Down,” the jazzy syncopated piano work of “Aluminum” and the white-bread funk of “Testing 1, 2, 3” grow on you.

The most solid song on the album has to be the modified twanger “For You” that sounds as if it were a mutant child of Poco and Alison Krauss’ Union Station.

Other songs aren’t quite as catchy, like “Next Time,” which has such a bombastic sing-song quality, it starts to grate from its first bar.

This album doesn’t have a golden song the equal of “If I Had a Million Dollars” – the BNL tune adopted for the New York State Lottery’s ad campaign.

It’s just a hunch but these songs will probably lend themselves to live performance – which’ll be put to the test when BNL land at the Hammerstein Ballroom tomorrow.

* BRIAN SETZER

“Nitro Burnin’ Funny Daddy”

Surfdog Records

Ex-Stray Cat Brian Setzer, one of the best axemen in music, can make his big blond Gretsch six-string sing in any style. He proves it on his latest studio disc, “Nitro Burnin’ Funny Daddy.”

The pompadoured rocker really hits the retro rockets with weird banjo-folk, walk-it-talk-it R&B, a guitar polka, some Western country and even a little doo-wop.

The kitchen sink approach might seem excessive, but with Setzer’s fine tenor powering the tunes, there is a remarkable consistency considering the scope of styles represented in this mix.

* MANDY MOORE

“Coverage”

Epic

Albums created entirely of cover songs are a dicey proposition. On Mandy Moore’s “Coverage,” she takes a few risks but not enough to make this the range-illustrating work it was intended to be.

Moore was on the right track when she opened the disc with XTC’s “Senses Working Overtime,” followed up by the Waterboys’ “Whole of the Moon” and Todd Rundgren’s “Can We Still Be Friends.”

But then the album turns to pop gloss with Carole King’s worn-to-a-nib tune “I Feel the Earth Move.”

While hearing Moore’s version of “One Way or Another,” “Moonshadow” and “Mona Lisas & Mad Hatters” is enjoyable enough, she adds little to the originals.

The one quality this disc does possess is vocal sophistication, something Moore had not captured on record until now. She even shows vocal muscle when she cranks Joan Armatrading’s “Drop the Pilot.”

It’s a good disc that could have been better.

* JEN FOSTER

“Everybody’s Girl”

½ American Garage Records

As a songwriter, Texan Jen Foster has a fine knack at setting mood in her music, but her confessionals, which aspire to the same peaks as the music of Tori Amos and Natalie Merchant, don’t have the juice to make it to the top. It isn’t that the songs aren’t listenable, they just aren’t compelling.

On “Water in Your Hands,” Foster doesn’t make you care when she croons that “she’s falling like the rain.” She sings about leaving her man, but there’s nothing in the piece that gives weight to the gravity of a breakup.

Foster’s disc is hardly without merit. She is excellent when she gets close to her coffeehouse comfort zone as she does on “She” and the album’s title track.

She’s a singer to watch and listen to – she just needs some more time to develop.